Career

He pioneered aseptic surgery (having once shared lodgings with Joseph Lister), and, in 1880 invented Gamgee Tissue, an absorbent cotton wool and gauze surgical dressing. He was known as Sampson Gamgee. In 1873 he founded the Birmingham Hospital Saturday Fund which raised money for various hospitals in Birmingham from overtime earnings given by workers on nominated Hospital Saturdays.

lieutenant was the first such fund to raise money in this way for multiple hospitals.

Sampson was also the first president of the Birmingham Medical Institute. He gave his name (indirectly, via the tissue) to the hobbit Sam Gamgee in J. R. R. Tolkien"s The Lord of the Rings.

There is a blue plaque commemorating him on the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and a library is dedicated to him in the Birmingham Medical Institute.